(Review of my best Shibari-themed works)

“Since 2004, Shibari has become the main element of his iconographic research, a series still
continued and evolving.
His youthful passion for architecture drives him to always pursue and overcome new limits; on the
smooth bodies of professional and amateur models, he creates decorations, rope friezes and sculpts structures always different.
His love for classical art, for the photography ‘of the beginnings’ leads him to work a lot in the studio, to
elements with a strong erotic appeal in artificial scenarios studied down to the last detail, where nothing is left to chance, detail where nothing is left to chance.

At first glance, this series of shots brings to mind the undisputed master of eroticism Araki, but a slightly closer look reveals that the two artists have little in common other than their strings.

In fact, from a purely formal point of view, Hikari Kesho’s shots are closer to the visions of Helmut Newton, albeit stripped of many of the fetish elements that distinguish the German artist, than to those of the great Japanese master.Araki’s models, all ordinary girls, have pained expressions, the photography, althoughstudied, has something faux-amateurish about it, an imagery of overbearing eroticism,scopophiliac and the disturbing elements he inserts into his shots are legendary: erotic toys, plastic reptiles, reference to a manga and television culture that distract attention from the bound subject and force the observer to wonder why they are there, to hypothesise their presence, to speculate.

In Hikari Kesho’s photography, the quest is for aesthetic perfection, the focus is entirely on the subject and the form: the contemplation of these images creates no questions and suggests nothing but wonder; for the perfection of the knots, the girls she photographs and the plasticity of the poses of bodies hovering in mid-air, as if suspended: deprived of matter and fatigue these bodiestake on an absolute two-dimensionality; looking at these images is a visual pleasure and arouses the same sensations as attending a ballet, in which the fluidity of movement and elegance distract one’s attention from the hard training.

Looking at these images one cannot help but think of the hard work of the artist, doubly involved first as a Nawashi, who imagines, rehearses and finally physically resurrects his ownfantasies, and then as a photographer of consummate craftsmanship, the skill with which he manages to obtain anformally and technically flawless image and carefully studying the faces of the girls immortalised one finds no trace of tiredness, of discomfort one feels on contact with therough rope that creates friction on bare skin.

They are icons of glacial elegance, images devoted to perfection.perfection in the construction of the image, an obsessive love of detail and neutral, cover-worthy faces that have little to say beyond the pure objective beauty of the subject.

The natural evolution of this series led the artist to devote himself more and more, from photographs taken instudio, to those taken in spectacular locations, placing his works of art in as many artistic, architectural or natural settings as possible, also representing, given the particularity of some of them, a great challenge!

The black and white skilfully used throughout his career leaves more and moreoften the field to colour, which brings him even closer to the world of fashion but at the same time redeems him from this cumbersome heritage: the most recent images recall analmost pictorial manner, the refined plays of light and shadow amplify the plastic feel of the strings, and although the constant presence of draperies may well give a sense of redundancy to the work it also accentuates the clear homage to the post-Renaissance art of Caravaggio and Gentileschi contrasting the contemporary digital coldness with these scenes of soft voluptuousness.”

Virginia Micagni